Wednesday, 31 January 2007

This story isn't meant to be mean. I hope if you're a big Star Trek fan you're not out there now polishing your phaser while you pinpoint my location on Google Maps. Honestly, look for the love in my portrayals -- it's there.

Now let's get on with our tale:

2/9

It was winter in Toronto and the snowflakes flew like stars at warp speed. "Christ, Aaron!" cried Scott. "Slow to impulse power -- the roads are slippery."

"Belay that order," said Eugene from the back seat. "We're going to miss George Takei."

Aaron's green Jetta spun its wheels through a bank of heavy chop and then fishtailed diagonally across the parking lot. Aaron counter-steered deftly and then popped the handbrake, the car grinding through a half-controlled slide directly into a snowbank beside the last open spot. A minor avalanche tumbled over the windshield. Aaron yanked the keys and tripped the locks. "Everybody remember where we parked."

"I can't open my door," complained Lansing.

"Climb over Eugene," suggested Aaron blithely as he squeezed his belly past the steering wheel to climb out.

"Oof," said Eugene.

Once inside the Metro Convention Centre the four friends stuffed their parkas into lockers and rearranged their costumes with care, flattening insignias, smoothing out folds. Lansing carried a leather satchel filled with pictures he hoped to have autographed, including a framed glossy of William Shatner himself. "How much do you think his autograph costs?" wondered Lansing as they hurried toward the hall.

"Shatner's? I think you have to blow him."

"Shut up, Aaron."

They found seats at the back of the main hall. George Takei stood at the podium in front of giant picture of his younger self, preening at his silk scarf as he tried to make heads or tails of a question being mumbled at him by a blue-skinned Andorian wearing a T-shirt that said, Trekkers do it boldly.

"Um, yes," replied George in his trademark baritone. "Matt and I have chatted about doing some voice work for the movie when and if it finally happens, but nobody from Fox has officially approached me yet."

"Follow up question, Mr. Takei: will any of the Futurama characters appear in The Simpsons Movie?"

"I honestly have no idea."

"What about Bender?"

"Next question, please."

Aaron swore in Klingon and rolled his eyes. "Why don't these dipshits understand that this isn't SimpCon? Stay on topic, morons."

Scott shrugged. "George is a multi-talented actor."

"Qu'vatlh," grumbled Aaron. "This is worse than when Chekov talked about comic books for an hour."

"His comics are kind of cool, actually," said Lansing quietly.

"Man," sighed Aaron. "Where do I sign up for friends who are less lame?"

"Shut up."

They attended a mock-Klingon luncheon where egg-noodles were done up to resemble plates of live gagh and there were Kirk-era pastel food cubes for desert. After that they split up to visit exhibits of personal interest. Aaron waddled off to a seminar on invented languages; Eugene went to check out a gallery of movie props and international versions of familiar posters. Scott and Lansing found themselves strolling through the carpeted mezzanine, their winter boots leaving little clods of melting slush in their wake. They stopped idly by a giant plexiglas case containing the actual Borg cube model used by Paramount. The lights had gone out on the model so a janitor was kneeling at the base of the display, fussing with wires.

Scott tapped him on the shoulder and politely suggested that the ground wire was loose. The janitor pressed it into place and the cube illuminated from within with an eerie green glow. "Thanks, kid," said the janitor, dusting off his pants.

Scott frowned. "I'm twenty-seven years old. I'm hardly a kid."

The janitor smirked. "You're dressed in pajamas in public, obsessing over a TV show," he said. "My mistake."

"This is a uniform," corrected Scott haughtily.

"Uh-huh," agreed the janitor, walking away.

Lansing put his hand on the taller boy's shoulder. "People are such assholes," he said sympathetically. "Forget about it: I bet that guy loves Raymond."

Scott sneered. "Why is it that people can be into whatever goofy crap they want, but it's us that end up the butt of the jokes? I mean, you can be foaming at the mouth crazy about pop singers or sports teams or Xenu, but if you like Trek you're automatically the world's biggest douche."

"People are assholes," repeated Lansing somberly.

"It's not like we're into Battlestar Galactica or something lame like that. Trek has something to say."

"You're preaching to the choir, dude."

Scott scratched at his blonde hair thoughtfully. "Actually, some things about Battlestar were sort of cool -- for the seventies."

"Yeah," agreed Lansing. "I think so too."

"Still, you see my point."

"Totally."

At the other end of the mezzanine was a smaller hall decked out with shiny pink banners that read, Women of Trek TorCon 1999. Scott and Lansing exchanged glances and then sidled up to the doors and peeked inside: Grace Lee Whitney was holding a tinny microphone, addressing the scattered audience on the subject of the gender gap in technology- and science-oriented university major programmes. She went on explain how everyone could gain a greater appreciation of the issue by buying a copy of her book on getting over drug addiction.

A pasty-faced, heavily pimpled girl dressed as a crinkle-nosed Bajoran elbowed her companion and whispered, "She's just shilling her book. This is such a rip-off. I thought Captain Janeway was going to be here."

"Some of the boys are cute, though," said her wall-eyed friend, fidgeting with a brassiere strap so tight it made her back look as if she were melting.

Scott and Lansing scanned the room: the mostly female audience was interspersed with three or four creepy guys trying to covertly check out the girls with painfully obvious peripheral flicks of their eyes. They were each of them alone, and they strained to appear casual. One of them quietly switched seats to put himself closer to a skinny, hard-faced black woman dressed as a curveless version of Deanna Troi; a moment later the woman switched seats to move further away from him again.

"This is sad," whispered Scott. "It's a fine line between courting and stalking when you're socially retarded."

Lansing nodded. "That's why I just don't even try."

Scott shook his head dismissively. "You're a good looking guy, Lansing, and you're sweet. You should be more confident. Girls are really into confidence."

Lansing considered this. "You want to go talk to some of them?"

Scott's forehead became immediately shiny with perspiration. "Um, no. No, they're probably sick of being hit on all the time. I mean, I don't want to be mixed up for a guy like that, right?"

"Right," agreed Lansing, relieved.

Later in the afternoon they congregated outside the front doors so Aaron could smoke a cigarette. Eugene bummed one from him in an effort to enhance his coolness, but all he did was cough a lot. "The trick is not to inhale," Aaron pointed out, spitting on the sidewalk.

"I thought only losers smoked without inhaling," said Scott.

Aaron sneered. Lansing giggled. Traffic along Front Street thickened as an ocean of sports fans were released from some event at the SkyDome. The smoking conventioneers stepped back to make room on the sidewalk, unwilling to risk brushing shoulders with people wearing jerseys. Some of them sheepishly pulled their coats closed over their Starfleet jumpsuits. The sports fans were in a celebratory mood, and they swore and punched each other playfully, the parade swelling over the curbs and against the doors of the convention centre.

"Maybe we should go back inside," suggested Eugene, holding his cigarette aloft like a pencil.

"You're such a pussy," snorted Aaron, turning to spit.

He spat on a broad-shouldered man in a Maple Leafs sweater, the phlegmy wad dribbling down the logo. The man and his friends stopped, eyes wide. "What the hell?" he shouted. "Did you just spit on me, you fucking nerd?"

"Oh shit," said Scott quickly. "It was just an accident. Sorry, man!"

"Don't apologize for me," interrupted Aaron. "This human is fortunate I do not kill him where he stands for mocking me so."

"Let's just go inside," said Eugene again, backing toward the doors and stumbling into a garbage can.

The man in the Leafs sweater lunged at Aaron but stopped short. When Aaron flinched and fell over backwards the man and his friends guffawed and starting walking away. Scott helped Aaron to his feet. The husky Klingon shook off his friend's arm and yelled, "You are now an enemy of the Klingon Empire, foul bIHnuch!"

"Shut up, Aaron!" hissed Scott. "I don't want to die here."

The man in the Leafs sweater paused in his tracks and turned around. "What did you say, you fucking homo?"

Aaron shook his head slowly, squinting with determination. "No, Scott -- today is a good day to die!" He leaned down and scooped up a handful of snow, packed it, and lobbed it across the sidewalk. It struck the man in the Leafs sweater on the chest, wet slush splattering up into his square-jawed face.

Eugene turned pale. Lansing gasped.

There came a brief second of inaction before the four friends spun in place and scrambled over one another to pull open the glass doors and get inside. They fell onto the rubber mats in the lobby and squirmed to their feet clumsily, desperate to get away.

"Red alert, dude!" squeaked Lansing.

The doors were flung open behind them and they were collectively pelted by a volley of ice balls flung with vicious velocity. Aaron crashed into a pillar and then dove behind it. Lansing covered his head with his arms and tried to back away blindly. Scott held up his hands and cried, "Okay, you got us -- you got us guys, ha ha. You win. Can we just forget about this now?"

The man in the Leafs sweater shook his head, wound up, and launched a tight ice ball directly at Scott. Scott ducked and the ice struck Eugene in the face. His nose immediately began to bleed.

The sport fans chortled as they let the doors swing closed again. "Dorks!" they laughed, rejoining the stream of pedestrian traffic.

Lansing moved to attend to Eugene but someone was already there, and her appearance shocked Lansing into immobility. "Oh God, you poor thing!" she cried, fishing a tissue out of a tiny purse at her hip and dabbing tenderly at Eugene's nostrils. "Are you hurt?" she wanted to know, brushing away a lock of long auburn hair that had come loose from her bun.

Eugene shook his head wordlessly, eyes riveted.

The girl was costumed in the sleek, curve-hugging silver unitard of Seven of Nine, tiny clusters of mock-circuitry glued to her angelic face. Her brow was furrowed with worry, her green eyes shining as she examined Eugene's nose critically. "I don't think it's broken, do you?"

Lansing forgot all about getting Shatner's autograph. In fact, he forgot about seeing Shatner speak at all. Though he couldn't understand quite how it happened, the next thing he knew they were all sitting in the food fair having fries with gravy. Eugene paid for Melody's which inspired her to give him a little kiss on the cheek. The look on his face was priceless.

"I'm saving the world from the Y2K crisis," said Aaron. "One line of code at a time."

They talked about the convention for a while, each of them interrupting the others in order to get in his bit to define his knowledge. They feigned nonchalance, ached to appear urbane. They fell over themselves other in competition to bus her tray. "What about you?" asked Eugene, putting his elbow in a small pool of gravy. "What do you do?"

"I just moved here," said Melody. "I don't really know anyone in this city so I figured the best way to make friends would be to go hang out where the kind of people I like get together. And, well, I'm really into Trek so when I heard about this con I knew I had to go."

"Wow," said Eugene, frowning at his moist elbow.

"And it worked, see?" laughed Melody. "Here I am, my second day in Canada and I already have four friends. I'm sorry you had to take a snowball to the face in for that to happen, Eugene."

Eugene glowered. Scott blushed. "Let's go," he stammered, standing up quickly and making a show of fishing around in his pocket for the little orange locker key. He was buying time for his erection to flag.

Melody led the way out, the locomotive of a short train of boys, her bum moving beneath the silver unitard a lure in equal parts frightening and hypnotic.

"Kobayashi Maru," muttered Aaron under his breath.

Typed by
Cheeseburger Brown

17
comments:

This is becoming such a fun story! And I'm further convinced now that Seven is going to end up being Sandy.

The eating part reminded me that we had, for a very short time, a Spaceport Bar & Grill in Edmonton while I was in university. My friends and I went every couple weeks before it went out of business. We looked nothing like - but acted very much like - our cadre of Trekkers here. We went to the peelers even more often, so I guess that made up for it.

The Spaceport also served fat egg noodles done up as Klingon gagh, which, ironically, often accompanied my Wookiee burger. (If you could eat two the third was free.) The Romulan green ale, fizzing with dry ice, was a must at every meal.

The best part was when somebody ordered the most expensive drink on the menu: the Pangalactic Gargle Blaster. (Douglas Adams fans will know.) A red light flashed and the manager announced it via a bullhorn to the entire restaurant. What got served was a fishbowl-sized snifter spewing dry ice fog and a myriad of girl-drink paraphernalia. Good times.

There was even once a friend got into a mock phaser fight with the Trek-garbed manager and then a not-so-mock argument about who had killed whom. Stalemate? But I digress.

I'm starting to understand these boys all too well. If they start talking or playing D & D at any point, I'll go bury my head in shame.

Like the rest, I'm leaning toward guessing Sandy as well, but it doesn't quite fit her character as we last saw her; then again, maybe this is CBB's continued emphasis on the corruption of well-intentioned people through less-than-honorable means.

I have to admit I enjoyed spotting all the Trek quotes... but I still want to know what happened to fraud protection.

I wasn't in costume. However, I was wearing a Vulcan IDIC necklace and methodically going through my bag of purchases, including, but not limited to: two CDs recorded by cast members (Brent Spiner & Nichelle Nichols) to round out my collection, several Trek books, a little print to have Doohan sign, an authentic-looking TOS insignia to sew onto my TOS redshirt female crewmember costume (yes, the skimpy short one, very cool for Halloween, but the insignia was an icky silk-screen), a shiny full-size TNG insignia pin for my winter coat, and a car window sticker that said "Vulcan Science Academy."

At this point, I should probably mention the following important fact: I am not one of those girls that guys try to pick up. I'm just... not, which makes the rest of this story that much weirder. So, this creepy little dude in a bad Bajoran outfit (off-colour nose plaster and all, this was about a month after DS9 premiered) kept eyeing me as I looked through each of my purchases; after a few minutes, he slid over a seat and nonchalantly dropped the following stellar pick-up line:

"So, do you like Star Trek?"

I looked at my pile of loot spread out on my lap and at my feet, looked down at my IDIC necklace, looked back up at him and said, innocently, "You think?"

Right about then, Jimmy Doohan stepped on stage. The Bajoran kept trying to chat me up during the talk, which I was trying to listen to (Doohan, by the way, was Awe. Some.) I finally had to ask the the guy to hush so I could hear.

I don't go to conventions much anymore. Fewer Bajorans that way.

I'm very much enjoying the story, CBB.

Inczy -- A food item from the Gorn homeworld that tastes remarkably like swedish meatballs

That's a delightfully apropo anecdote, and in part it serves to suggest that my research for this story is not totally off-base. Thanks for sharing, and for troubling to comment.

IDIC -- is that "Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations"? I could cheat and Google it, but I'm trying to mine my memory for TOS tidbits.

Question: did you find us here through one of the Star Trek fan forums I posted on, or through some other link? Or, possibly, you've been here all along and were just waiting for a relevant moment to contribute?

Here, in no particular order, are the obstacles I need to overcome in order to bring the anthology to light:

1) I want to include in the anthology at least one story which has not appeared on the blog as a kind of value-added incentive for those of you who've already read everything online. The problem: finding the time to write that story while I'm up to my gills keeping up with the stories I'm posting. I know which story I want to include (the surprising connection between Luc Drapeau from The Bikes of New York and Slimfast Metamucil from Two Moments of Invention), but I don't know how to stuff it into my schedule.

2) Lulu works by having the user upload a pre-formatted PDF for the contents of the book. I am having a lot of trouble trying to convince Microsoft Word 2004 to output a PDF without mangling all my formatting, including extra line breaks, and so on. On my agenda but not yet realized is a series of experiments with OpenOffice to see if I can make the process less frustrating and time-consuming for myself. If anyone has Lulu template tips, please share them. I just about lost of my shit on the night I was fighting with the MS. for Simon of Space.

3) Do you think I should create two anthologies, a scifi and a non-scifi, or mix the genres together? Do you think I should include everything on the blog or just a "best of"? I'm undecided, and I want to know what would be most attractive to you, the vocal minority who speak for the rest of the readers who never post comments.

Personally, I'd like to see the anthology happen ASAP. It's finding the time to sort through these issues that's giving me grief.

Wow, CBB, thanks for that extensive schooling in the real world implications of credit card fraud. I get the feeling that this comes from yet another of your fascinating life experiences.

On anthologies: I'd love to have a separate SF one -- like Heinlein's The Past Through Tomorrow -- but the more stories you write between now and then, the more complete/awesome it will be. The French Connection has piqued my interest to even greater heights.

This story is great fun, and I'm curious about so many things... please excuse the naive fixation on the credit card issue :)

First up - I'm really getting a kick out of this story. The characters are lovable and the daialogue feels sadly true. Very much enjoying.

As for the short stories, my vote would be to fit as many as you can from across all genre's. I completely see what you're saying about folks who avoid SF. But with a set of stories that are as interconnected as yours, it seems odd to draw lines in the sand. It would weaken the magic you've created of blending completely different story-telling types into one cohesive universe. That's my opinion...but I'm not one of those anti-SF folks.

On Lulu, my experience is limited, but I did have great success printing one book on there. (Seriously, just a single copy.) Was a bound copy of three years' of email correspondence 'twixt me and a friend, as a gift, which came out just as I'd formatted and was very well received. I customised my Word file to comply with their requirements for the (I think) 9 x 6 paper size. I had three different sections in the book to accommodate changes in page numbering as well as gutters to account for the hardcover spine. Whatever line breaks I applied manually were reflected in the PDF as output. When I submitted, I just uploaded the Word file to let their engine do the PDF thing. Worked well enough, though I tried it on my end as well and it PDFed just fine. If I can offer any other help, lemme know. I'd hate for you to lose your shit.

On the anthology question, I'm of the mind for a single volume. A couple reasons. First, there is the interconnectedness between several of the stories that would probably get lost, and I'd hate to see that.

Second, and more importantly, I think the genre (or fictional world) in which you base your stories is not the meat of the matter. The STORY is. If I can't get it out of my head that I'm reading a science fiction tale, rather than focusing on the story being told, then the author has failed to engage me. In two-plus years of rabid consumption this has yet to happen with ought you've writ.

I was too wrapped up in Simon to worry about the Space. Lallo had me completely engaged, so I cared not a whit that he was an immortal neanderthal who'd had a mysterious brush with alleged space aliens before his girlfriend died. You get the point.

I'd elect to hawk it as a collection of stories and leave it at that. (Frankly, the boundary on some is a little hazy.) Let them speak for themselves as eloquently as they've already done. To split them as sci-fi and non is to categorise -- something you've defied nicely to this point. Fuck the labels, man!

As for the 'all or best-of' question, it's really a matter of opinion. Your best-of probably isn't mine or Shiek's or Moksha's... I'd hate to see anything excluded that I liked. My opinion on that would be to exclude only that which YOU think is sub-par, or re-write it in the buckets of free time you have hanging off that yoke around your neck.

My only criticism in that same vein is that the shorter stories didn't allow the same degree of engagement as the longer ones; they left me wanting more in a non-cliffhanger sort of way. But consider, The Reaper's Coleslaw, though short, was still a nice way to get another glimpse of Mike, which goes WAY back up there to my first point.

And now I must stop.

hraojasm -- How a Klingon male knows he's brought himself to climax, with or without his mate.

Since you asked, I found your site around the time of "The Darth Side" (which I found via a link on - No Shit - a knitting BB) and have been reading ever since. I don't follow any on-line Trek fan forums, as my TOS/TNG fandom seems to be inexplicably yet firmly rooted in the pre-internet world of my teenage years. I'm one of those quiet yet diligent blog-stalkers who is rarely moved to comment on the spur of the moment. I usually need days and sometimes weeks for things to sink in and stew around, by which time, the moment has passed, and the internet has moved on.

This slowness to comment is particularly problematic at parties and academic conferences, where I am very often left nodding and smiling a lot, hopefully in the company of wine. It also isn't very helpful when it comes to feedback for you, I'm sure. But don't ever doubt that the silent masses are here, and reading. The web, when good, is a joy to behold.

That said, on the question of a "best-of" vs. "all" or "sci-fi" vs. "other" anthology, I think moksha and simon have said it quite well. I would favour a complete, all-in-one, but would buy it no matter what you decided. Your stories are usually delightful, sometimes agonizing, often interconnected and always surprising, and I can't think of one I wouldn't want to see in print.

You have, I should also note, given me a concrete reason to finally visit to the Textile Museum of Canada, which is another one of those things I've meant to do for a while and haven't, what with always having something else to do in The City most days.

uafozn -- roughly translates to "Heyyy!" in the Kelvan dubbing of Happy Days.